Looks Like I'm Gonna Have To Start Trying

Chapters

I Chime In With An "O'Malley, Open The Goddamn Doors!"
Whoever Said Unicorns Were OP Was Lying To Themselves
This Is His Perfect Domain and He Still Messes Up
He Didn't Skip Leg Day! He Didn't Even Skip Blue Leg Day!
Breaking News at 11: Holey Villain Has a Plan Full of Holes
I Did Not Fight a Child, But a Child Won Anyway
Destroy Them With Pew-Pews (Or At Least Try To)
Well, Look At It This Way: I Mean Technically, Her Party is Saved

I Chime In With An "O'Malley, Open The Goddamn Doors!"

One can't really expect much from O'Malley. He was a kid who keeps a sword nearly taller than his person in his pants. (He tried hiding them in the hammerspace spine, and ended up getting stabbed.) Or from a kid who doesn't know his right from his left. (He fell asleep during that lesson at the Odd Squad Academy.) In terms of his occupation, he was merely there to do a job. Sit in a chair, press buttons to make sure his coworkers went through a series of tubes, and access the other series of tubes with the question of "can children get pilonidal cysts?" followed by massive doomscrolling. All while getting paid absolutely nothing. Canada was weird with the whole "free child labor" thing. He didn't understand it, and he didn't really care, because that meant he could apply for a job at the Shmumbermart and actually earn a living wage.

But even though he wasn't getting paid, he still had loyalty to Ms. O.

She was tough. Ruled with an iron fist. Could paralyze a man simply by twisting the wrist. Could probably commit genocide if she really wanted to. Really, with her outclassing him by strength and hierarchy, he had to respect her. In Precinct 13579, it was just basic common sense to respect your Ms. or Mr. O. Call them by their title, not by their name. If they order you to do something, do it. And if you're pro-oddness, you're as good to Odd Squad as dog poop on an island.

So what if Ms. O didn't know he existed? He was employed under an organization where she was the boss and he was the runt. The motto of "All Kids Are Equal, All Kids Belong" applied to DEI rates, not hierarchy.

On this particular day, though, he was in a festive mood. Today was the day of Ms. O's surprise birthday party, a planned celebration whose knowledge started with Oscar, got passed on to Olive, then got passed on to every agent in the precinct sans Otto, who was deemed guilty by reason of loose lips and kept out of the loop until the day of. Planning a party for the boss seems simple on paper, but O'Malley had heard it was tougher in execution. Something about Oscar sending Ms. O to an auto body shop to work on a few cars with the reward of finding a juice box somewhere under one of the hoods. The juice box was a lie, of course, but it was a better idea than having her go over to the liquor outlet and letting her become a wino. (And yes, he was pretty confident she was legally old enough to drink. What alcohol did to a kid's body, though, he left up to those in the Medical department of Odd Squad.)

But, in a cliche he really should have seen coming, things went downhill fast.

"O'Malley!"

The young tube operator rushed over to Oscar. "Yeah?"

"It's Ms. O. She's back. Early."

"With a car?"

"I- n- w- maybe? I mean maybe the guy gave her one, she's probably old enough to drive..." Oscar furiously shook his head. "Anyway, forget about that. You need to stall her."

O'Malley blinked. With no lack of incredulity, "You really think that'll work?"

"It's better than her coming in here and ruining the surprise!" Oscar made a shooing motion with his hands. "Go, hurry!"

"How am I gonna-"

"Hurry!!"

And that's how O'Malley found himself rushing through the halls, having near-collisions with his coworkers while listening to the frantic banging of balled-up fists on two steel sliding doors. He was genuinely surprised the doors weren't ripped clear off already, but maybe Ms. O wasn't too keen on making any dynamic entries today.

"O'Malley, is that you?"

He stopped and stiffened.

"Can you open the door? I have to put my new Subaru Impreza somewhere and I'm not finding any good spaces here."

"You got the car that lesbians drive?"

"It's the one that had the juice box in it. Lesbian car or not, it's lucky and I've got a valid driver's license." A pause. "Though vehicular sexualities would be a first for me in terms of odd cases...but I digress. Get me inside."

"All right, all right, hold on..."

Reaching behind his back and pulling out his tablet was more of a frantic move than anything. He had no idea what he was supposed to do here. The tube lobby was his workplace-inside-of-a-workplace, but the only people he'd ever have to stop from leaving it were villains, and Ms. O was definitely not a villain.

After a minute of letting the gears in his head turn, he came upon a solution.

Pressing the lock button caused three beeps to resound, followed by an automatic recording: "All doors locked."

"Did you just lock the doors on me?!"

"N-no! It was, uhh...it was a m-malfunction. Yeah. The doors haven't been working right since you left and I've been trying to fix them ever si-"

"Hi! Oh, no, Oscar called me. I'm on my way in now. Those stairs are torture, though. Ever think of putting in an elevator? One decked in pink?"

O'Malley knew that voice. It was distant, but he knew whose voice it was all the same. Ms. O didn't have half the hearing ability he did, and that was one of the things he was thankful for. Dr. O pinned it on good genetics at his last physical exam.

"O'Malley! What's going on out there?"

His attention was brought back to the current situation. Acting on the first thing he thought of, he decided to curl his hand up into a fist and repeatedly bang on the door in a pale imitation of a hammer. It was better than being a one-man band with imitating the sounds of a construction site, because who was going to believe there was a construction site with only one person on duty? Even the precinct's Maintenance team didn't have one kid on duty at a time.

"I-I'm fixing it! Fixing...fixing...fixing..."

He could hear slurping from behind the door. Her juice box wouldn't hold her for much longer. And if she didn't somehow, by some stroke of bad luck, have another one tucked away in her hammerspace spine...well, it'd be his little body getting throttled.

His body, and the bodies of everyone else in the bullpen.

"Forget it, I'll open this stupid thing myself!"

He took away his fist for only a second, just to shake his hand out because it was getting sore. The words Ms. O had said went past him like a gust of wind.

And then the creaking started.

The dangerous sparks nearly hit his eye, and he yelped as he scrambled down the stepstool and took a step back. All he could do in the moment was stare. This girl was prying apart doors that were ten tons each. Which, to any experienced agent, wasn't all too impressive of a feat from someone who could lift up cars made for adults, but still shook O'Malley just on the sheer basis that he had never even seen such raw strength. At least he had the decency to use a sword when slaying dragons. His boss would rather go for the spine or the neck with her own two hands.

Snapping back to reality, his throat ran dry. He had to think of something fast. If Ms. O got even an inch past the doors that held her back, there would be no stopping her.

So he decided that re-closing the doors while they still could be closed was the next viable option. It, at the very least, gave him some time to warn Oscar and the others that a threat to their existences was dangerously close to breaking free of confinement.

"Oscar, Oscar!"

"What is it, O'Malley?"

"She...she's opening the doors."

"Did you not lock the-"

"With her hands."

Out of the corner of his eye, O'Malley saw Otto's jaw drop, his head turn to give an incredulous look of "that has to be impossible on some level of science" at Olive, and then it move back to him. If he wasn't careful, he'd get a tiny dragon in his mouth. O'Malley had seen that happen once. Poor agent was breathing fire for days. But that wasn't the issue right now.

Oscar's expression was roughly the same as Otto's, just with an industrial-size level of despair. "O'Malley, are you aware those doors weigh ten tons each?"

"For a total of twenty tons? Yeah. I know." O'Malley resisted giving an eye roll. "I sealed them shut for now, but she's going to try again. The Maintenance people are really gonna have a field day if she breaks them."

"Oh God, and we're still not ready..." Oscar took off his glasses and stared despondently at the floor for all of half a second before he made eye contact with his coworker again. "Wait. The tubes are connected to the Creature Room, right? Just send in a creature to stall her in the meantime!"

"Are you serious?! You want me to make her angrier?!" O'Malley cried. "If she breaks through those doors and gets in here, we're all dead!"

"Says the kid who slays dragons as a hobby!"

As much as he would have loved to butt heads with one of the more annoying children he had met in his short life thus far, O'Malley had to bite back one hell of a pithy remark for Oren. He settled for bared teeth and a stink-eye instead.

Oscar rubbed his forehead. "Okay, okay, then, uh...how about alternate dimensions? Do the tubes connect to those?"

"Tube 2 does."

"Good! Send in something from an alternate dimension to distract her. Not enough to kill her, but enough to give her a good fight. There has to be something out there like that."

Briefly, O'Malley tried to scan through the contents of his tablet in his mind, and found that his memory wasn't that expansive. Still, it had to have an Alternate Dimensions section listed somewhere -- they taught that at the Academy and everything. The question, then, was what alternate dimension he had to contact and pull beings out of.

"Go! Now!"

That was the sole command he needed to hit the ground running, not noticing Oscar's dramatic pout that was somewhere between "upset" and "on the verge of a grand panic attack".

By the time O'Malley got back to the doors again, they were ajar by several inches and counting, sparks raining to the ground. He could hear the sound of effort coming from his boss, and he could swear he saw her face becoming as red as an average Target store.

Not red with effort, though. Effort was something she didn't need.

No, it was red with rage. Which came through in a screeching demand.

"O'Malley, you'd better open these doors or I-"

The doors hissed closed before the tube operator could hear the rest of the possible-maybe-yeah-it's-definitely-a-death threat. He knew what would be haunting his dreams tonight, by a landslide. But as he scanned through the tablet to find the Alternate Dimensions section and tapped on it, he didn't have time to think about what alternate dimension he would use.

He ran on the hastily-cobbled-together logic of "cute name, deadly villains".

"My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" was certainly a cute name. Too girly for his taste, though. And something that saccharine had to have some dark and disturbing villains to counteract it.

...Oh God. It took him three flicks of his finger, and he wasn't even down the whole list.

Frantic pounding came from the other side of the door.

Gritting his teeth, he tapped on a name at random, grabbed a tissue from his pocket to wipe the forming sweat off of his forehead, and slunk down to the floor with an anxiety-packed sigh, setting the tablet beside him.

This had to work. There had to be some villain in this dimension that could beat his boss, and whoever he picked was it. Even if it was a spur-of-the-moment pick, and even if Ms. O had sugar as a major part of her diet, her energy couldn't last forever.

Yeah, he had this in the bag. And as for the party? Ah, he'd leave that one up to Oscar, Polly Graph, and the others. They had things covered.

Whoever Said Unicorns Were OP Was Lying To Themselves

Oprah -- or Ms. O, as was her title -- was the living equivalent of a hot flame, without the hypnotic flickering that drew people to her. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact. She had a reputation for being tyrannical, quick to anger, and still having the cuteness to win over agents and clients alike. An epitome of beauty with a temper that, going by what her job was, seemed normal on all accounts. Did it scare her coworkers? Maybe some of the newbies. But it gave them a good taste of what some Odd Squad Directors were like and helped to build experience.

Having the doors that separated the tube lobby and the Trophy Room closed on her for a second time, she let out a string of curses that were all over the map in terms of time periods. No one here knew what "egg-sucker" meant unless they lived as long as she had, and even then, Olive was the only agent she suspected of having a prolonged lifespan. (Really, though, "egg-sucker" was more of an insult for resident "I can eat a dump truck full of food in one sitting" Otto. And as far as she was aware, he had never heard of the term in his life.)

"Okay." She balled up her fist, smacked it against the palm of her other hand, let her fingers grip the fist, and gave it a few soft twists. The bubbles that had formed on her bones inside popped in such a way that one would be hard-pressed to figure whether she had broken her fingers or not, but to her, was a harmonious song all the same.

It had been so long since she had gotten to punch something. What better day than her birthday to do it again?

"Once I get out of here, I'm gonna see exactly what in the hell is going o-"

A whirring sound made her sharply turn around. Down Tube 2, in a clear transparent sphere -- which was a clear indicator that the guest was no agent in any department -- came someone, or something, that she couldn't recognize. It was curled up in a ball, naturally, and boasted purple hair with a cyan streak running down it. She squinted, trying to figure out exactly what this thing was and why it had to share a room with her.

The sphere split in two, both ends retracting to the top and the bottom. Stumbling to and fro was none other than...

"A unicorn?" Correction: "An alternate dimension unicorn?"

"Ugh...what happened?" The unicorn shook her head. "One minute I'm spying on Twilight, and the next I'm..."

Silence. The staring contest began its first, and only, round.

"...here. With-"

"A human. You're with a human." Oprah remarked dryly. "Bipedal creatures. You've probably never heard of them."

The unicorn had an equally-dry wit to match. "Can't say that I have."

In her opponent's eyes, Oprah could see the gears turning. The pupils widening in realization. Her body went rigid, just on sheer instinct. Who knew what this equine was planning? And if anyone had told her she looked harmless, Oprah would have shut them down on sight, and then cited the regular dress code for Odd Squad's bad-guy gallery that was as far removed from "regular" as one could get. Not that this unicorn had a dress code, but she still certainly looked odd enough to qualify.

"What's your name?"

"Oprah." She didn't feel a need to recite her occupation. There were better ways to flex dominance over enemies than telling them you were the boss-girl of a quasi-government organization's Toronto branch.

The unicorn put on a devious smile. "Starlight Glimmer. A pleasure." She took a tentative step forward. "Tell me something. Do you think you're...better than everypony else?"

"Are you my therapist?"

"Just answer the question."

Oprah had to refrain from remarking "whatever gets me punching you faster". She didn't want a conversation. If she wanted a conversation she'd go back to the auto shop. She rolled her eyes. "No. I don't."

"Hmm, good." Starlight's tail swished back and forth slightly. "And do you have a cutie mark?"

"A what?"

"A cutie mark."

Oprah's brows furrowed. "I don't know what that is."

"My, you are quite clueless, aren't you?" Starlight turned, showing her right side to Oprah. Her hoof pointed to her flank. "You see that mark? That is known as a cutie mark."

"Yeah, news flash: we don't have those here."

"You don't?"

"No."

Instead of disappointing Starlight, the revelation caused her smile to grow wider. "I see. In that case, I suppose I could just take you along with me..."

Not wanting to imagine the horrors of where this unicorn came from, Oprah snorted. "Over my dead, cold, mole-maggot-infested body."

"Fine. Then I'll take you back by force. And together, we can deliver fair retribution to Twilight Sparkle and her pathetic friends for taking away everything i ever had!"

Those first few words were like a pyromaniac seeing a fire. Oprah could feel the adrenaline coursing through her. Now, finally, she could have a real fight. This wannabe-tough-gal unicorn was already grating on her nerves. Now was her chance to get rid of her.

Starlight reared back and fired a beam from her horn, leaving Oprah with nothing to do but dodge. Immortal as she was, having the body of a seven-year-old with the stamina to back it up would work well to her advantage over a mare whose wrinkles she could see in the eyes, even if said mare was more keen on using magic to fight. Which was perfectly okay, because Oprah had her own special brand of magic.

Gadgets were, by their very definition, magical. They weren't necessarily enchanted by the Scientists that made them, but Oscar, who effectively kickstarted the Science position, knew his way around a wrench, a screwdriver, and a motherboard in the shape of a snowflake. The gadgets worked in complete tandem with the science-defying universe, with powers ranging from trapping someone in a block of ice to sending them somewhere outside of the Milky Way. The possibilities were infinite -- there were ten thousand gadgets and counting. Oprah was confident that was far many more spells than Starlight had in her arsenal, even if she herself only carried a few gadgets on her person.

Reaching behind her back and taking out a gadget, she looked up to find a half-dome of magic lasers aimed right at her. A wry smile formed on her face as she tucked the gadget under her armpit and grabbed her collar with both hands instead. "Amateur hou-"

The explosion rocketed through the tube lobby and leaked into the Trophy Room, stopping just short of the doors separating that and the bullpen. For this precinct, explosions was normal. What wasn't normal about this one in particular was that there wasn't a scream accompanying it.

Because Oprah remained entirely unharmed.

Starlight's eyes widened. "How...what did y- aah!"

The beams, small in size but grand in power, hit her dead-on. She stumbled backwards, ending up with her rump planted against the doors.

"I don't know if this would classify as heartburn. Normally clients show me cardiology exams." Oprah squinted. "Did I get you in the heart? It's hard to tell over the smoke."

Starlight clutched her chest with a hoof, popping open one eye to glare at her opponent. "How dare you." she snarled. "Using a mirror to reflect my magic?"

"I don't wear the suit just because it's Odd Squad dress code."

To Oprah's utter lack of surprise, this only served to enrage Starlight further. Removing her hoof from her chest, the unicorn reared back and charged up her horn again for another blast. This one was one Oprah couldn't dodge as quickly, nor could she weaponize a counterattack in time. As a result, the beam hit her in the chest, encasing her in solid purple crystal and leaving nothing moving but her eyes.

"Honestly, I should have tried that spell from the get-go." Starlight rubbed her chest again before advancing slowly towards Oprah. "You're an annoying little brat, for sure. But I can sense power within you. Lots of power. You're certainly nothing like Twilight and the rest." In true villain fashion, she began pacing around the frozen Director, who looked on with nothing but burning malice. "Come with me, Oprah. Help spread my message of equality to Equestria. A...'human' such as yourself would be perfect in sending Twilight for a whirlwind."

Oprah didn't say anything. Not that she could. She definitely wanted to. But for now, she was content with waiting for Starlight to return to being in front of her as she tuned out the horned quadruped's monologuing.

"The only question is, how would I get back to Equestria from here? I could teleport, but who knows if that would work here without conseque-"

Starlight was cut off by a magic beam. This one, however, was not one of her own that happened to backfire. As she stumbled backwards and shook her body out to keep herself steady, it became clear to her that the attack came from inside the crystal, which began developing cracks that spread outward like an elaborate spiderweb.

Not all too familiar with being trapped in crystal -- there weren't all too many villains with that as a stock-in-trade -- Oprah collapsed to the ground with a grunt, attempting to get any shards off of her body by any means necessary, whether that was by brushing them off her jacket or shaking her legs out to dispel them from her skirt. She rose to her two feet in record time, giving an irritated huff. "You're lucky I don't charge you five Jackalope Dollars for a new uniform. Can't you trap me in something less messy?"

If one listened hard enough, they could probably hear Starlight's molars cracking from how hard she was gritting her teeth. "You insolent...just come with me!"

"Why?"

Starlight stared with a look of disbelief. "I already told you why! So you can help me spread equality all across Equestria, to all the ponies of the land! Nopony should be above anypony else! It's the rule of nature!"

"The rule of...'Equestria's' nature, perhaps." Like a fine sip of wine, Oprah tasted the foreign name on her tongue. And like a fine sip of wine, she decided she hated it. "But not the rule of Earth's nature. Or Canada's nature. Or Odd Squad's nature. Or the nature of the Robot Prin-"

"SILENCE!"

This time around, Oprah was able to dodge the beam that shot out of Starlight's horn, realizing that she could use her trusty shield instead of darting around like an idiot but also realizing that it took a lot more than "pew-pew laser shot at you and makes contact" time to whip it out, utter the "shields up for Odd Squad" phrase, and play defense.

"You realize I could end this right now if I really wanted to?"

"How?" Starlight began to slightly quiver with rage. "By actually following my orders?"

A scoff. "No, of course not. You should be lucky I'm even talking to you, let alone obeying your every whim..."

Oprah trailed off. She came up with an idea. A wicked, awful, send-Maintenance-to-do-Transportation's-work idea. If Starlight was asking how she could get back to Equestria from here, Oprah could answer that handily. The only problem was that it would eliminate punching. But maybe Equestria was one of those worlds where this unicorn was the leader, meaning that if she arrived back injured, her cronies would come. That would give Oprah ample opportunity to show off.

...No, actually, on second thought, she wanted to punch this unicorn. No mercy.

"Tell you what." She went over to the control panel for the tubes. "I'll come back with you. It would be nice to see this 'Equestria'. Maybe I could get the Big O to build a whole new Odd Squad precinct on it. Focused only on mathematics! No language, no arts, and God, please, nothing in STEM, bleaugh. And you could lead it alongside me! Make it truly..." A small smile began to form. "...equal."

It was like telling a dog that you had a treat. "Really?" Starlight blinked, her tone full of hope and relief. "B-but you were so opposed to it earlier!"

"Yes, I was. But to tell you the truth, I've been trapped in here for millennia. There were..." Oprah bit her lip. "...people, beyond these doors. People like me. But they're dead and gone now. And I haven't been able to get out since." She clasped her hands together, squeezed her eyes shut, and then opened them to perform one of the finest shows of puppy-dog eyes she had ever put on. Which wasn't saying much, because she didn't usually resort to begging to get what she wanted. But it would net her good points with Starlight, and so puppy-dog eyes it was.

"Goodness, that's awful." Starlight pointed to the tubes. "Why didn't you just climb up here?"

For Oprah to say "I'm too weak and frail" would be a slight against both the powers-that-be and Odd Squad for having such a pathetic Director in their ranks. It would also make her about as sickening as her opposite in the mirror she looked at in the bathroom every day, and so she decided to try a new method, putting away the puppy-dog eyes to her relief. "They're out of service."

"But-"

"They can bring others down. They can't send them up."

Starlight stared at the tubes. "Hm." She pivoted towards the doors separating Oprah from the rest of Headquarters. "And you've tried these doors?"

Oprah shuffled from side to side, in an effort to find just the right angle to sock Starlight into the second tube. The unicorn was horizontal, the tube vertical. But the latter was just wide enough for a horse of her size to land in. Hopefully. Oprah frankly didn't have the time nor the will to do any math, and she was inside of a crackfic anyway. Any edutainment was off the table, with apologies to Sara DeWitt.

"Yeah. Just to be a...friend, though, could you do me a little favor?"

It wasn't the best one-liner. But it'd do.

Oprah put her right foot back, pulled her fist in, and let it fly towards her opponent's side. It made direct contact, sending Starlight flying towards Tube 2, where she bounced off of the sturdy plastic material that made it up and landed on her side.

The unicorn grunted as she tried to crane her head towards Oprah as best she could. "Aah...h-hey, what are you doing?!"

With a grin, Oprah made her way to the control panel. "I've been trapped in here for millennia. I'm not about to let my fighting skills get rusty."

Starlight coughed, her voice becoming raspy. "Are you serious?! You just agreed to go with me!"

"Did I?" Oprah glanced to her left, tapping a square-shaped button to her left that connected to the second tube. "Preparing to squishinate!"

"S- I'm- what?"

"Oh yeah, one more thing. When you get back to 'Equestria', you might find your organs mixed up. I'm sure there are medical professionals who can fix that or whatever."

"Wait, what do you mean by 'squishina'-"

"Squishinating!"

"Wait! Wait!! TWILIGHT SPA-"

Like two loaves of a sandwich, the bottom and the top structures came down over Starlight, trapping her in a transparent sphere and forcibly curling her body into a ball.

The last thing Oprah heard was a scream that she could place at either "screw you" or "I'm in pain and hurtling back to my homeworld at extremely fast speeds". She didn't know, and she didn't care. She had gotten some fighting in, and that was good enough.

But she wanted more. She wanted someone who could really put up a fight. God sakes, if that unicorn really did have minions, Oprah hoped they showed themselves, and soon. And she hoped they had power levels well above their boss. She needed an equal or superior, not an inferior.

This Is His Perfect Domain and He Still Messes Up

To say that Odd Todd was someone forgettable was a falsehood. The white streak in his hair. The choice of outfit that made him fit right into the "People of Walmart" group. The cackling laugh that could echo through the bullpen. He was the living epitome of the sin "kids" and served to highlight just why adults looked down on them so much.

There were pro-normalcy people and anti-normalcy people. Odd Todd was firmly on the side of anti-normalcy, and that was because he found flaws within Odd Squad's method of operations that blended in with his skewed perception of reality. It was because he was a former Odd Squad employee that the threat level to both the organization and to society was astronomical. That, and kid villains had higher rates of competency than their adult counterparts.

Oprah knew Odd Todd well. She had been the one to let him go about his life out of sheer ignorance. It wasn't all too often her precinct got an oddness-fighting prodigy in its employment base, and she had assumed he was harmless. As for his partner Olive, speaking to her boss about the issue was as nerve-wracking as a socially anxious person actually going to get a job in the first place. It was these two factors, among others, that led to countless lives being taken with what was, for all intents and purposes, bullets. Not actual bullets, mind, but pies, because Odd Squad was a kid-friendly franchise and some of the gadgets were already skirting the line when it came to looking gun-like.

For her part, Oprah didn't want to really reminisce about it all. But it was kind of hard not to when her next opponent, who stood at twice her height, looked like he could pass for Odd Todd's I-was-a-failed-government-lab-experiment brother. And was sneering at her, which just made his face all the more punchable.

"So let me get this straight." She took a deep breath. "So your name is Discord, you also come from 'Equestria', and you want to turn this world-"

"Into chaos, my dear!" Discord threw...well, what Oprah would reasonably call "hands" up into the air with delight. "Starting with you. Though I hardly think you need any work done."

"Because I'm a human."

"Exactamundo!"

The question of how Discord even knew about humans danced on Oprah's tongue for a moment, but quickly returned to the lungs, curled up, and died when she realized he was probably Odd Todd's brother. Because only Odd Todd would be so despicable and petty as to send his brother to his old precinct on his old boss's birthday. And she was sure he knew when her birthday was, because she never let anyone live it down starting from the week before.

"So you want to make the world more odd?" she repeated.

"I much prefer 'chaotic'. But to each his own."

"Aren't they the same thing?"

Discord paused for a moment. His eyebrows moved up and then down in thought. "I...suppose they are. Hm. I've never quite thought about it before." A snap materialized a propeller cap marked with a question mark on the front, which he put on his head.

Not knowing her latest opponent had such a power, Oprah's eyes began to widen. "What was that?"

"What was what?'

"That thing. You snapped your fingers and something appeared. Hold on." Oprah stuck her tongue out and squeezed her eyes closed, pressing her index fingers to the sides of her head as she got her brain working. "Okay, I'm thinking of a juice box. Fruit punch. Shmumbers brand."

Not that she could see it, but if she could, Discord's look of interest would have been priceless. Her eyes were open and shifted toward the ceiling, though, as she rummaged through her ever-trusty hammerspace spine.

With a ding, out came the very object she had been looking for. Nice and full, perfectly box-shaped, and with a straw already in the top so she didn't have to resort to putting her lips to the tiny hole embedded in it. "Can you do that with your fingers?"

"Well, it's a bit more complicated than hammerspace and wishes." Discord rolled his hand around and around, until it eventually started moving on its own. He detached it from its arm and let it do its thing. "But if you want to simplify things, then yes."

"...That makes no sense. You just contradicted yourself."

"My dear, nothing in this world makes sense." Attaching his still hand to his arm again, Discord looked around with confusion. "Exactly where am I, anyway?"

For a second, just a single second, Oprah wanted to lie. She knew this anomalous nature-defying being would go insane if she uttered the name of the organization she worked for. But if he was really Odd Todd's brother, then he would surely know of it, right? So it shouldn't be a shock to him. That was her theory, and she was sticking to it.

"Odd Squad. Precinct 13579, to be specific."

This brought delight to the already-grinning Discord. "Odd Squad, you say? I suppose that would only serve to add another layer of confusion into why I was brought here through a tube and a ball." His body separated into three parts, with his thorax separating into two more pieces so his hands could twist those and get all the cracks out in a way that was anatomically incorrect, but didn't so much as faze him. "Ahh, much better. Don't you have a better way of getting down here?"

"We're..." Oprah's brain, on sheer instinct, tried to force her to do math. She repressed the urge. "...hundreds of feet under the ground. The tube system has been an efficient and safe method throughout many years of usage."

As Discord pieced himself back together, he scoffed. "My back would say otherwise."

"Did your organs get mixed up and turned around too?"

"Mhm." Discord pat his torso a few times. "I figured the ride back to Equestria would reverse things, so I never bothered to fix them. They float around in there all the time, anyway."

Oprah blinked as she took a sip of juice. "Wow. You really are Odd Todd's brother."

"Huh?"

"Why did Odd Squad never put that in his familial records?"

"What are-"

"I mean, it's not the first time an Odd Squad agent has a sibling that doesn't look remotely like them."

"Hold on." Discord put his hands up. "Miss..."

"Oprah."

"Oprah..." A pause. "Like Oprah Winfrey?"

"I...yes?"

"Are you her daughter?"

"No."

"So you're just named after her."

"The writers named me. You'll have to take things up with them."

Discord opened his mouth, then closed it. And then it opened again. "Well, uh...anyway. Exactly what do you mean by 'you're Odd Todd's brother'? Who is 'Odd Todd'?"

Another sip of juice. "You don't know who Odd Todd is? Even though you're brothers?"

"We're not brothers! I don't even know who he is!"

"Oh, so you're a clone!"

"I'm not a clone!"

"So what are you, then?"

"I'm a draconequus!"

"Ah, so part dragon and part horse." Oprah nodded. "I can't say I've ever seen those before. But you look like you're a lot more than a dragon and a horse."

Discord grabbed his face and comically pulled it down. It snapped off like a mask that had been stretched to its limit, the same as its owner, with an identical face underneath it. "Enough already!" Extending a talon, he pressed on Oprah's forehead, relieving her of her color and turning a shade of monochrome. "There. That should hopefully take your naivety down a notch." Snapping his fingers conjured into existence a dial that read "naivety", which he moved to the left so the level went from 3 to 2. Not that he noticed the shockingly-low number, however, as he was too busy admiring his handiwork.

The dazed Oprah stumbled around for a moment, trying to come to her senses. Memories flickered in her mind, bad memories that involved those she loved getting hurt. One that stuck out in her mind was O'Donahue getting thrown into a tree by a villain who looked a lot like Discord, and that was enough for her to rapidly shake her head in order to dispel whatever hypnosis Discord placed on her. She certainly wasn't expecting that power of his, but she didn't care. Nor did she even stop to think if the memory her brain conjured up was even legitimate, because villains came in all shapes and sizes and so one looking like a draconequus certainly wasn't out of the question.

Her mouth bared every inch of her teeth, her brown eyes flaring with pure rage as she got into a running stance.

Discord remained unfazed. "Now, are you willing to tell me exactly how I can get out of-"

"This is getting out of hand." Polly Graph sighed. "Oscar, can't you just make three different cakes with a Cake-inator gadget?"

"I could, but I wouldn't have called you if the situation was that easy, heh."

Olive clapped her hands together. "All right then, how about this? Each one of us will make a case for each flavor. Whichever one gets the most applause is the winner. I, of course, will be the representative for the vanilla group. and in order to show you all why you don't need to make your food fancy, I have an essay prepa-"

A popping sound heralded the arrival of a dish that was covered with a silver top. Otto caught it neatly in his hands, though his knees were forced to suffer from the weight of what was underneath. With a grunt, he set it on the table behind him, draped with a purple tablecloth and lined with all sorts of purple party decorations. He took a few sniffs, and it was then that his mouth began to water.

"Who needs cake? We have chicken!"

Ripping the top off, Otto showed the masterpiece he had caught to the other party guests. It was, indeed, a roast chicken, arranged with no garnishes or seasonings whatsoever but appearing to be fully cooked and safe to eat.

"Otto, I'm getting a bad feeling about that chi-"

Olive's warning flew past Otto like a leaf on the wind. He grabbed a wing, tore it off, and bit into it with all the eagerness of someone who had been waiting twenty minutes for a grilled cheese and French fries.

He chewed a few times, each one slower than the last. Then he stopped. His expression turned from excitement to sheer horror as he looked to see what was inside of the food he just ate.

"Thish...ishn't chicken."

Normally, Olive would have told him to finish chewing, because eating with your mouth full was impolite. It seemed he wasn't interested in that. "It's not? Then what is it?"

Otto swallowed his bite and looked at his partner, sweat beginning to pour down his forehead. "I don't know. But if a villain's trying to poison us..."

He collapsed to the floor, clutching his stomach. Every single one of the party guests wisely backed away.

"...I think they succeeded."

Author's Note

I originally wanted to flesh out this chapter more so it would push just over 2k, but Discord in the Odd Squad universe is just far too fitting of a concept to contain in a singular crackfic chapter and it's honestly a shame I didn't realize that until I actually started writing said chapter.

He Didn't Skip Leg Day! He Didn't Even Skip Blue Leg Day!

Oprah had given up.

Not on the enemies from Equestria, mind. It'd be a cold icy day in hell before she did that. She had fun with the ones that had come down so far.

No, she had given up on freeing herself from the tube lobby. Whatever O'Malley was doing would counteract any feat of strength she tried. Calling out to him had proven useless, as he had never answered. And the other set of doors, which led to a hallway lined with all sorts of odd rooms, were locked as well, and she didn't dare try those.

In all honesty, she was having fun fighting these weird-looking villains. She socked one back to her homeland and made the other into a feast fit for a family. The fun did come from the brutal blows she landed on them, but it also came from discovering new ways to get rid of them, ways that she thought of solely on the fly. If she had been more inexperienced when it came to physical combat, she would have been proud of herself. But she was seasoned. The surprise wore off after the first ten fights, just as the surprise of "I wielded a gadget without killing anyone" wore off on any agent after the first few shots fired.

Slumped over the control panel for the tubes and sipping the last of her juice box, she sighed. It had been several minutes since she had sent Discord away, and she was starting to think that no other villains would show up. If her suspicions were right, this would be on the right track to becoming the lamest birthday gift she had ever gotten.

That is, until something massive came down the tubes. So massive that it looked like the spherical pod was about to burst when it landed in the tube lobby. Oprah looked on in curiosity, sitting up and waiting to see what would come out.

It was a centaur. And not the kind she had seen before. Instead of its upper half being that of a human, it had a more bull-like head, and arms that she had only seen on really buff adults. Its bottom half looked equine, but had far bigger hooves than those of horses as she knew them. However strange it looked, though, it was undoubtedly a centaur. And true to her initial speculation, it was more gigantic she had thought, to such a point where she was surprised it didn't burst through the top of the tube lobby.

"Greetings, fair visitor." Oprah got down from her seat and waved. "I assume you've come from Equestria?"

A puff of air was expelled from the centaur's nose. "Yes. I am Lord Tirek. And I demand to know the reasoning behind your summoning of me to this place."

It wasn't the name so much as the title that got Oprah's attention. "You're a leader?" She bowed. "Then you must have given your ambassadors a break in order to come and see what Odd Squad is for yourself. My name is Oprah, or Ms. O. But you are free to call me Oprah. No need for formalities."

"Hm." was the only initial response. "So this is 'Odd Squad'?"

"Not the entire organization, no. One of its precincts."

Tirek considered this for a moment, his head moving back and forth. "Where are the ponies?"

"The...?"

"Ponies."

Oprah bit her lip, telling her brain that the ponies Tirek was looking for were vastly different from the ponies she knew. And she didn't want Precinct 13579 to start facing allegations of unicorn abuse. "Um...sorry to tell you this, but we don't have ponies here."

"WHAT?! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?!"

If Oprah weren't wearing a bun tight enough for doctors to diagnose her with "loss of blood circulation", her hair might have billowed in the wind Tirek created with his breath. Either way, she was pretty sure she was outclassed in the yelling category. "You're not in Equestria, my Lord."

"Then where am I?"

"Another planet."

"What planet?"

"Earth."

Tirek's eyes slowly closed. "So allow me to get this straight." he said. "I was...taken. No, ripped from my home and placed here on 'Earth', in 'Odd Squad', where there are NO PONIES?!" He bent down, craning his neck so that his nose was nearly touching Oprah's. "Tell me there is at least some magic I can try to steal."

Had Oprah not met Starlight before, she'd have been completely confused by Tirek's request. But she knew about unicorns as a species, and she knew about the magic they possessed. Unfortunately, giving up the unicorns that roamed about in Headquarters would land her in hot water with the Big O, and she couldn't risk that after her many decades of service. Plus, she already had a good idea of how she and Tirek could both get what they wanted.

"Well...I could, perhaps, point you to a source. Rich in vitamins and minerals. Not from ponies, but it is just as strong." A smug expression began settling into her features. "However, it'll cost you."

Tirek kept his head exactly where it was, his yellow eyes glowing fiercely. "Cost me what?"

"You fight me. If I win, you get a free tube ride back home, all expenses paid. If you win, I lead you to a source of magic you can feed upon until the day you become victorious in your goal, whatever that is." Oprah stuck out a hand. "Do we have a deal, my Lord?"

This got a hearty laugh out of Tirek. "You? Take on me? And what chance does a puny little thing like you have against an almighty vessel of power like myself?"

"You'd be surprised. Weaklings don't get to be Odd Squad Directors."

"Then by all means." Tirek shook hands with his opponent, then straightened and crossed his arms. "I will allow you to take the first swing."

As much as Oprah wanted to end the fight quickly, she was itching to actually fight someone for longer than five seconds. She rushed towards Tirek and gave him a mighty sock in the chest, causing him to move back a step and clutch a hand to his chest.

"You...you dare to strike-"

"Hey, you agreed to the deal." Oprah cracked her knuckles. "I'll give you this, though: you've been working out."

Tirek reached his left arm back and swung it towards Oprah in an attempt to grab her. However, the girl was much faster, and dashed backwards just as his hand met the ground. She ran up the arm with ease, leaping up when she got to the crook of his elbow. From there, it was like time stopped, as she reared her own arm back to hit Tirek straight in the face.

The punch connected.

Adrenaline coursed through Oprah's veins once more, causing her to lose track of the passage of time. All she cared about were the punches, the kicks, even the bites and the headbutts. Strategy had gone out the window after the fourth-or-so round of blows had been exchanged. She was just happy that where Starlight and Discord had failed, Tirek had succeeded.

As she leapt off of the very edge of the tubes' control panel to strike Tirek in the face again, an orange aura suddenly surrounded her, freezing her in place. Tirek, with a sphere of magic suspended in between his two horns, glared at her with nothing but pure fury.

"There's a good reason I don't fight by physical means. It's quite clear you outmatch me in that regard." He bared his teeth. "But when I drain every last ounce of magic from you, it will be a far easier fight!"

It was then that Oprah began to realize what this villain's schtick was. He wasn't a physical fighter. Like Starlight and Discord, he was a magic user, and one that thrived off of the magic of others to boot. Now, him wanting to find ponies to steal magic from made sense beyond "mwahaha, here's my ultimate evil plan".

Still, even though she had no experience with a villain who sucked out agents' life forces -- at least not yet; she was sure Villain University had some students with that power right at this moment -- she let Tirek do his thing.

Open mouth, glow orange, try to suck her magic out only to fail.

"WHERE IS YOUR MAGIC?!"

"I hope you're as smart in Equestria as you are here. If so, then I think its inhabitants are pretty well-off." Oprah tutted. "Do I look like a pony to you? Let alone one who would even possess magic?"

Tirek had no answer to that, instead giving an angry growl.

Oprah took the opportunity to gloat. "What an oversight. Though for someone who sees their targets as free fuel sources, I wouldn't expect you to know the difference between a pony and a human being." She pointed towards the tubes. "Now, unless you want to continue fighting physically -- and trust me, I really really want to -- then I'd suggest you take your leave before I shove it into your bloody hands."

"NONSENSE!!" came the infuriated roar. "You will find me some magic to steal, and-"

"Or what?"

Tirek stopped. His expression went from red all the way through to confused.

"You can't actually do anything. Our battle has proven I beat you in physical combat, and I have no magic you can take." Oprah shrugged. "At this point, you're better off going back to Equestria. Unless you want to make a bigger fool of yourself."

She barely had enough time to dodge the blast of magic that was sent her way. It crashed through the back wall, creating hole after hole in a Droste effect as expansive as the seal of Odd Squad itself.

A pit of anxiety began to form in the deepest area of her gut. It wasn't the fact that Tirek was capable of laser blasts that were just as larger-than-life as he was. It wasn't the fact that he could absolutely annihilate her in one go if she made one wrong move. It wasn't even the fact that he could break out of his spherical confinement if he got shot back up the tubes, something that she herself had only just realized.

Sighing, she reached behind her back and pulled out a gadget. White-and-blue, as with most Odd Squad gadgets, which looked like a satellite dish haphazardly slapped onto a gun. She made sure to speak under her breath, taking the art of stealth and running with it as she began to aim.

"How much is this all gonna cost me?"

After the party guests cleaned up the bile from the floor -- O'Malley included, as he had been dragged away from his post by Oscar -- Olive decided to visit Otto in the aptly-named Hospital Room, created when agents realized that the Medical Bay's plastic half-pipe "cot" was not the same as a bed used for recuperation purposes.

The boy was lying in one of the beds, dressed in a hospital gown patterned with the Odd Squad seal on it and watching something on the TV on the other side of the room.

"Hey, partner." Olive greeted, moving the curtain aside. "How are you feeling?"

Otto gave a weak wave of his hand in return. "Better. Dr. O's nurses pumped my stomach. It was a really long process, they said, 'cause of how much food I ate." he explained. "The party's not cancelled, is it?"

"For a little bit of vomit? Of course not." Olive replied. "We've cleaned up in the bullpen. As long as Ms. O remains in the tube lobby, we've got all the time in the world to keep planning. Those alternate dimension villains O'Malley sent must be keeping her pretty busy."

"Don't jinx it." Otto pointed a finger at his partner. "We should get things rolling before she comes barging through."

"We will, yes." Olive nodded. "You should stay in bed until Dr. O discharges you. Has she given you a timeframe?"

Otto sighed in frustration. "A few hours. Someone's supposed to check up on me here and there. Dr. O says it's basic procedure." He scoffed. "Even in a world where we have people with two literal left feet and stomachs where brains should be, she still wants to follow 'basic procedure'..."

"Bending the rules of human anatomy only goes so far, Otto."

"But-"

"Dr. O went through eight years of medical school to be able to pump stomachs and plaster tape over non-closable mouths. Not the Odd Squad Academy. Medical. School."

"Harvard?"

"Too expensive."

"Yale?"

"Too far."

"...Cornell?"

"For God's sake, Otto, we live in Canada, not in the land of hamburgers and hellish healthcare." Olive rolled her eyes. "Anyway, it doesn't matter where. My point is that you should trust her. Her nurses too."

Otto's frown grew tighter. "I guess." he muttered, turning his attention back to the TV. "It's my fault for eating the chicken anyway. I thought we could take a third option."

"You said that it wasn't chicken."

"I..." Otto sighed. "Yeah, you're right. It wasn't. I don't...I don't know what kind of meat that was."

"Well, if it's any consolation, Oren and Olaf agreed to dispose of it in the Volcano Room. They said the lava turned a color neither of them recognized. At one point they saw this group of computer-animated horses...and a baby dragon." Olive shuddered. "That's an image I'm not getting out of my head for the next week."

Otto didn't really respond with anything other than a shoulder roll. Silence fell over the room, at least dialogue-wise. The TV was playing some brightly-colored saccharine cartoon Otto didn't really care to watch, but there wasn't much to look at when you were confined to a cot.

"I'd better get back to the party." Olive headed for the door. "See you in a few hours, okay, partner? Hang in there."

Before Otto could even utter anything close to a plea for Olive to stay, the door closed, and her body moved out of his line of vision. Sighing in frustration, he turned the TV off and decided to sleep. If there was nothing good on TV, and nothing within view that he could read, sleeping seemed like the next best option. He was getting tired, anyway. A little nap certainly couldn't hurt.

Plus, maybe it would help him heal faster. Agent anatomy was funny like that.

Author's Note

Blue Leg Day is a canon event within Odd Squad that...doesn't really exist despite the franchise's other odd-lidays. I changed it from its original canon name of Blue Leg Night to fit with the chapter title.

"Plastering tape over non-closable mouths" is an "Odd Outbreak" reference, where Dr. O does, indeed, plaster tape over non-closable mouths as a temporary cure for the titular outbreak. Because nothing screams TV-Y like a kid-friendly surgery scene. (For what it's worth, at least she's qualified to do surgeries.)

Breaking News at 11: Holey Villain Has a Plan Full of Holes

The easy part was sending Tirek back up the tubes. One blast of the gadget set to "MAX IMPACT" straight to his chest and he was off to the land of the horse once more.

The hard part was trying to figure out the best way to get Odd Squad's Tailoring department to make her a whole new outfit, because the seams were beginning to pop.

Half of her skirt was lightly scorched, as were parts of her jacket and shirt. Several stray hairs had begun to loosen themselves from her bun. Sweat was dripping down her face, which was a look she did not want going on her lucky cube.

All this, after just three fights? Where only one of them actually had anything of merit happen? She really was getting rusty. And of course, that wouldn't stand. But it wasn't like she could go after some agent's head just because they lacked competency in one area of oddness-solving expertise, or couldn't do something as simple as multiply 10 by 10. That was what these villains were for. They lacked competency in doing bad deeds, in a way that lacked all the charm of the similarly-incompetent villains she knew. She could take out all her grievances on them, without repercussions.

Her mouth opened as she wondered if she should try for O'Malley again, then closed it as she realized that he had probably made the process automatic. Just another stalling tactic. Whatever he was doing, he was hiding something from her, and as soon as she had beaten every last villain who invaded on her righteous territory, she would lay a verbal smackdown on him.

Just as she was scheming of ways she could punish her agent, another spherical pod was sent down Tube 2, signaling a new arrival. This villain was pitch-black in color, but had blue-green hair...and also had a lot of holes, none of which were leaking blood or any liquid equivalent.

"Oh. A villain who specializes in moldy Swiss cheese." Oprah smirked. "Now that's more my style."

With a whirring sound, a tall, lanky body tumbled out and landed on the ground, all four legs splayed in a rather unceremonious fashion. The body's owner stood up slowly, and Oprah realized that she...wasn't nearly as tall as she thought she would be.

The Director decided to go with "State your name and business," just to spice things up.

"Queen Chrysalis." her newest opponent spat. "What, exactly, am I doing here in this wretched place?"

"Surprised your first question isn't where this 'wretched place' is." Oprah quipped, deciding to set aside the fact that this villain also apparently had a title. "To answer that question, you're in Odd Squad. Precinct 13579. My precinct."

Chrysalis simply tilted her head slightly, as though waiting for Oprah to elaborate.

"As for what you're doing here, you were sent here from Equestria."

"By who?"

Oprah was almost tempted to sell O'Malley out. Almost. Knowing that his only reliable weapon was a sword, though, and knowing she had personal standards, made that idea go right into the trash bin. "By me. See, I've been itching for a good fight. None of your fellow villains have given me much, aside from Lord Tirek." Her shoulders rolled. "Maybe you can provide me with something?"

"Pah." With a bright green vertical flash of magic, Chrysalis took on the shape of the girl herself. "Does this answer your question?"

Ah. A shapeshifter. Oprah knew that power well. Namely because there was a villain in Odd Squad's rogues gallery who was literally named Shapeshifter. And because it wasn't the first time a villain had turned into Precinct 13579's Director. Unlike the Shapeshifter, though, Chrysalis's take on Oprah was...less than stellar, which didn't matter much as long as the power level was the same. If that was the case, then Oprah could have a decent fight with...herself.

Weird how the Shapeshifter never tried that, now that she thought about it.

"You're from Equestria, and you can shapeshift into humans?" she asked.

Chrysalis blinked. "Into...what?"

"Humans. I'm a hu- honestly, for a world full of horses, you don't have one human?" Oprah rolled her eyes. "I'm getting tired of explaining my species to all of you. At least some just accepted it and didn't even ask."

"I can transform into anything I see!"

"Yeah. You saw me for only a minute and transformed into...that."

Chrysalis hissed, exposing her forked tongue which looked weird coming from a human girl. "You said you wanted to fight. Why do you care about what I look like? Are you so pathetic you have to resort to cheap shots?"

Oprah's brow furrowed. "I don't think that term means what you think it means." she said, not bothering to fight the smug aura that squirmed its way into her voice. "But I know shapeshifters. One of Odd Squad's villains is a shapeshifter. And she managed to imitate me better than you did." She bit her lip as an uncomfortable memory surged forth. "Except the stranger-danger thing. That required a restraining order."

Chrysalis didn't say anything, because her confused expression did all the talking.

"...Can you change into something else?"

With a groan and another green pillar of light, Chrysalis changed back into her regular form. "You do know my entire thing is shapeshifting, right?"

"Well, unless you've seen any other humans you can shapeshift into..." Oprah gave a halfhearted shrug.

And then it hit her like a lightning bolt made of metal.

She could tear into O'Malley verbally, but fighting him physically was out of the question. Chrysalis could transform into O'Malley, if she had something to use as a reference. And if Oprah beat up a villain who looked like O'Malley, then shipped them back to Equestria...

A sickening grin spread across her face. Reaching behind her back and digging around, she began muttering to herself. A few moments later, she pulled out a manila folder and opened it, revealing the full-body shot of one of her precinct's tube operators.

Chrysalis leaned forward and squinted. "What is this?"

"O'Malley, one of my agents. Transform into him."

"One of your...huh?"

"I'm not explaining. You know what he looks like. Now transform."

Chrysalis didn't move. To Oprah, it looked like she was trying to antagonize her with facial expressions.

"Don't underestimate me."

With an angry hoofstomp, Chrysalis transformed into the boy that she had been shown.

Oprah nodded, tucking away the folder in her hammerspace spine. "Much better."

"This is humiliating." Chrysalis grumbled. "I am a queen. I should be forming my own hive, with you in it. Instead I'm..." A shudder washed over her body. "...serving under another queen as a runt."

"I don't care whether you're a queen or not. As long as I can punch, kick, and stand a winner by the end of it all." The grin found its way back onto Oprah's face, looking more manic than anything else. "So stop complaining and let's go."

"And if you lose, will you-"

A kick to the windpipe stopped Chrysalis from finishing her sentence, and made her de-transform in the process. The bug coughed and spluttered, clutching a hoof to her throat as she scrabbled for any semblance of speech.

"Will I what?" Oprah quirked an eyebrow. "Will I become part of your 'hive' or whatever? Sorry, but I've already got one. Where I'm the queen."

Chrysalis coughed a few times, massaged her throat, and glared daggers at Oprah as her crooked horn began to glow. "Nonsense! You're no queen! Do your subjects even feed off of the love of others?" She scoffed. "Oh, who am I kidding? Your kind probably eats changelings."

"Ew, no." Oprah's nose wrinkled like a bunched-up wad of aluminum foil, which wasn't anatomically possible anywhere else but in the good old Oddverse. "I'm an omnivore, but bugs are more of an apocalyptic, world-ending-need-food meal than anything else." Her brown eyes scanned Chrysalis up and down. "Besides, I hate Swiss cheese."

The last comment got Chrysalis's lips to peel back and expose her teeth, the glow on her horn growing more intense. "Don't you dare!" she snarled. "I am sick and tired of hearing that sad excuse for a joke every time those smooth-brained ponies look at my true form. Say it again, and I'll make sure to make you one of the best meals I've had in a long time."

A small bit of bile came through Oprah's esophagus and made her tongue its personal landing pad. "Ugh..." She swallowed, in a futile attempt to stop herself from spewing juice and bile all over the place. "You talk about me eating...changelings." The word didn't feel familiar to her, and she had to take a moment to remind herself to do some research on the interwebs later. "Look at yourself, talking about eating me. Not sure what it's called in your world, but here we call it 'hypocrisy'."

Chrysalis rolled her eyes. "I don't eat you. I eat your love."

"My love? My love for what?"

The next thing Oprah knew, a bright green blast of magic was sending her careening towards the wall, right next to the hole Tirek had left. Her back hit it quite hard, and her coccyx felt something similar once it met ground.

Chrysalis worked fast. Before Oprah could stand on her own two feet, the changeling chiefaroni had already wrapped her upside-down body halfway in a cocoon. She could feel the blood rushing to her head, and the bile she had pushed down before threaten to crawl back up and resolve things on its own.

"Just a little more..."

"Don't stroke my chin."

The more the cocoon became wrapped around Oprah, the more she realized that she needed to get out before it encased her face. She was lucky she had picked a precinct with low ceilings, so the fall wasn't as long as she thought it would be. At the same time, though, she was upside down, and anatomical liberties didn't really apply when it came to cracked skulls.

She craned her head to look at her binds as best she could, and it was then that curiosity took over. If blobs tasted like lemons -- something Odd Todd had so carelessly demonstrated when he had eaten one and nearly died from intensive bowel-emptying -- then what did the stuff Chrysalis used to make her cocoons taste like?

...Okay, it was probably disgusting. But Oprah wasn't really seeing any other way. She had already tried breaking out using raw strength, and no dice were even offered for her to make a chance roll.

Hoisting up her body, she took a bite, Chrysalis stopping to watch. It was a familiar sensation, almost gummy-like in nature. And it tasted like green apple.

"You make your cocoons out of the same material used for fruit gummies?"

Chrysalis blinked. "What?"

"This tastes..." Oprah took a moment to swallow. "This tastes like an apple gummy. You probably don't have them in Equestria. Probably never even heard of them what with your diet." She tried to pry her hand free so she could continue eating, but resorted to just pulling her body up to take another bite. "But they're really good."

Stammering was the only response Chrysalis seemed to give, which only increased in desperation levels when she witnessed Oprah craning her neck to impossible degrees just to eat her confinement.

"That comes from my insides, you idiot!" the holey changeling screeched. "Why are you eating it?!"

"I had one of my agents eat a blob once. Said it tasted lemony. Really unfortunate he got a bout of diarrhea that lasted all the way until his hospitalization." Oprah wriggled. "But this isn't too bad, for something that came from your gut."

Chrysalis held a hoof to her mouth. Whether it was in shock or disgust, Oprah didn't know, and she didn't care.

"Ah, wait, I'm being freed!" Oprah's hand flew out of the cocoon, and she wiggled her fingers.

"Stop eating my cocoon!" Chrysalis thrust her other hoof at the girl. "Nopony has ever tried to eat their way out of..." She trailed off as her eyes slowly moved upwards, stopping at her capture's sneakers.

Slowly but surely, Oprah was sliding out.

All it took was furious wriggling for the speed to be cranked up by at least five notches.

In a flash, Chrysalis found her neck being squeezed by a free hand. Hacking did next to nothing besides make her look desperate.

"They say Raid kills bugs dead."

Everything aside from the scleras shrunk. A forked tongue shot out subconsciously, nearly whacking the girl in the face, but she simply freed her other hand and curled her fingers up into a tight fist.

"Who do you think has stock in the company that owns it?"

The vote for a chocolate cake had been next to unanimous. After Otto's food poisoning, everyone had resolved to just pick a flavor and be done with it. An agreement was made with Polly Graph to frost it pink, as payment for her services.

The next part was, naturally, what gift Oprah should get. Individual gifts were certainly an option, but there had been a precinct money pool going two weeks earlier and it was a good excuse to get some financial lessons in. Which all became moot when Oscar revealed he had a Gift-inator that could just conjure up any gift into existence and everyone thanked the many advancements in technology that led them to this point.

"Why does finding a gift for Ms. O have to be so hard?" Oren lamented.

Olive fixed him with a half-lidded stare. She said nothing in response, because arguing with Oren didn't even bear so much as a leaf, let alone any fruit.

"Well, if it helps..." Polly presented an easel with a list of two options. "I've narrowed it down. We can either get her a bike, or we can get her a trampoline."

Oscar's brows furrowed. "How did you decide on those two things?"

"It wasn't easy. I've spent years crafting a list that currently has over three hundred items." Polly explained. "If you'd like, I can fax it over to you for future reference."

"Ooh, really?"

"For a price."

Olaf howled.

"$10. In Jackalope Dollars, not Canadian ones."

As Oren looked from his partner to Polly and wondered how she could understand him, O'Malley spoke up. "But I thought your payment was in pink things?"

"I can't make a living off of pink things, O'Malley. Pink is not a currency." Polly huffed. "Thus, I need money. Oprah can pay me when the party is over. Capeesh?" She clapped her hands together, not bothering to wait for a response. "All right! So, everyone should still have their pens. And here are your papers."

With a simple flick of her wrist, small square pieces of paper dyed in pink were sent flying towards the crowd and caught neatly in varying pairs of hands.

"Now go vote. And make sure your writing is legible this time."

Author's Note

In "The Briefcase", the Shapeshifter turns into Oprah in an attempt to steal the eponymous briefcase. To make sure Olive and Otto don't find her suspect, she acts overly nice, going so far as to tickle Otto under his armpit ("You bet, you little cutie!") and pinch Olive's cheek to the girl's very visible discomfort ("And you, such a face!") before leaving with the briefcase in hand. Her disguise wears off once Olive uses an unnamed gadget on her, and she's revealed to actually be a villainess. An adult villainess.

If this wards you away from watching Odd Squad, wait'll I get to the cannibalism, the suicide and depression jokes, and more attempted murders than an average Law & Order episode. But really, Friendship is Magic has plenty of dark moments too. I'd say they're on even ground. Take that as you wish.

I Did Not Fight a Child, But a Child Won Anyway

After the initial punch, things had been pretty easy from there. By the time Oprah was done with the Queen, her face, chitlin backing, and at least three of her legs looked next to unrecognizable. She had given up when Oprah had offered to shake her hoof, but needed a physical prompt to get into Tube 2, which really meant curling her up into a ball and throwing her hard enough to make a small dent in the plastic backing while also activating the tube to squishinate her and send her back up.

Finally, Oprah had beaten up something. It had taken forever, but she had done it. Though beating up a bug wasn't exactly a story she would want to tell the rookies. Maybe if she fibbed and said it was a bug whose size was on par with an average Ginormouse.

The thoughts made her tired. Not having a juice box handy was starting to take a toll on her. Reaching behind her back to get another one had proven to be a fruitless endeavor, which she blamed on whatever weird magic Discord had. If she didn't get one soon, she would start to go into withdrawal, and she wasn't ready to start obsessively cleaning the Bathroom with a toothbrush again.

Just as she was starting to shift into the REM stage of sleep, Tube 2 sent down its next contestant. Small, pink, with curly blue hair.

It didn't take a person with a below-average IQ to realize that O'Malley had sent down a literal child. Oprah knew that even before the filly stumbled out. The problem was that it was a child, and she had already dealt with Odd Todd. She didn't need a gender-bender species-bender with the same MO.

"Where am I?" The filly looked around in a fluster. "What is this place? How do I get out?!"

Oprah would have sought not to address her latest foe if basic human instinct didn't get in the way. "You're in Odd Squad. Precinct 13579. Can we get this over with already?"

The filly turned. "Get what over with?"

"The fight." Oprah pulled herself up. "You're here because my agent sent you down to fight me in what has become a very irritating stalling tactic."

"Oh." The filly's face expressed confusion for just a second before she put on an innocent smile. "Well, anyway, my name's Cozy Glow!"

"Oprah. And if you don't fight me within the next five minutes, I'm making my bed here and lying in it."

Cozy sat on her haunches and contemplated her hooves for a moment. "Uh...I mean...don't you think I'd be put at a disadvantage? You have...those...and I have hooves. Also, you're taller than me."

"Does it look like I care about advantages and disadvantages?"

"Look, I may be a villain, but I have standards, okay?"

Having argued with numerous clients and villains whose brains were slow in the development department taught Oprah that arguing was, in most cases, nothing but a waste of time and energy. Cozy wasn't any different, and so Oprah didn't see it fit to get into a verbal spat with her. "I can't exactly get down on all fours and battle you. I have pride and dignity. Don't you have...I don't know...magic powers or something?"

"No, but I did manage to steal nearly all of Equestria's magic!"

That made Oprah perk up, an idea forming in her mind. She swiveled her head as though something above the double-doors to the Trophy Room intrigued her, letting her eyes shift to Cozy to let her know she was interested. "Really? How so?"

"Wait." Cozy blinked twice. "You want to hear the story?"

"Sure. If Pegasi don't have any magic powers in your world, I want to see how you pulled it off. Enlighten me."

Like a parent who was finally willing to listen about their kid's day at school, Cozy's eyes gained a delightfully innocent shimmer. "Okay!"

Oprah was lucky that Cozy was one of those creatures who paced and moved about as she talked. It gave her ample time to reach into her hammerspace spine, take out the Bed-inator, and discreetly fire it at the other double-doors, all while Cozy's back was turned. The filly was so absorbed in her tale that she completely missed the action until the very end.

Which was when Oprah had already taken off her shoes, undone her bun, climbed into the bed, and pulled the sheets over her.

Cozy stared. "What..." Her expression twisted into rage. "What are you doing?! I'm telling the grand tale of how I nearly brought Equestria to its knees and you're treating it as some..." A proper motorboat engine impersonation. "...some stupid lullaby?!"

"A lullaby is a song. What you're doing is reading me a bedtime story."

Innocent as Oprah's words were, she couldn't deny that seeing Cozy struggle to comprehend what was happening was giving her quite the free comedy show. She hadn't seen that level of confusion from a child since she last shut down Otto when he asked how old she was. Poor thing had to be consoled by Olive for a week. Tragic, really, but he was far too young to know about her aging abilities.

"Fine!" Cozy reared back, then stomped both front hooves onto the floor before making a beeline for the hallway double-doors. "If you're not gonna get me out of here, then I'll find somepony who will!"

"I wouldn't try that if I were you." Oprah said with a yawn. "Both sets of doors are locked tight."

Cozy backed up. "Y-You're bluffing."

"If they weren't, I'd be sleeping in an actual bedroom, wouldn't you think?" Oprah turned onto her side. "Since I don't want to fight you, and you're clearly not willing to fight me nor are you capable of doing so, you're better off heading straight home."

"But I don't even know how to get back to Equestria from here!"

"Really think it over. I'm taking a nap. Who knows how many more weirdos O'Malley's gonna send."

A growl rattled in Cozy's throat as she began to trot around the room, looking for some means of escape.

It took her all of five seconds to spot the tunnel of holes shooting through the various rooms before the devilish grin formed on her maw.

"So as you can see here, the votes are largely tied. We have twenty votes for a bike, twenty votes for a trampoline, and one vote for a...potato."

"Potato!"

No one needed to look to know that Olaf was the one who had offered that suggestion.

"So does this mean we have to vote again?" Oscar lamented.

"If you had given us a set of options to vote for in the first place, this wouldn't have happened." Olive said.

Polly's mouth opened. Closed. Then opened again. "I..." A slight blush crept into her cheeks. "Y-yeah, you, uh...make a good point, Olive. I can't argue with that." She looked at Oscar. "But no, we don't have to vote again. All we need is to move the outlying vote to one of the two options."

Oren's face went a shade of white even clouds couldn't compare themselves to. Olive pinched the bridge of her nose with her two fingers. Oscar nervously looked at Olaf. O'Malley began to wonder if the automatic process he had put in place to stall Ms. O would hold up.

And Otto...wasn't here. He was still in the infirmary.

"Okay, I'll get this over with." Oscar heaved a mighty sigh. "Olaf, pick one. Either bike or trampoline."

"Potato."

"Not a valid option. Bike, or trampoline."

"...Potato."

"Oh for God's sake, I understand the songs of Hatsune Miku better than I understand you." Oscar shoved Olive forward. "Your turn."

"Wh- Hatsune Miku?" Olive's brow furrowed. "Since when do you listen to Hatsune Miku?"

"You'd be surprised at Otto's musical tastes beyond Soundcheck, heh."

Olive dropped the issue and focused her attention on Olaf, gripping his shoulders. "Olaf, you need to pick one. Either bike, or trampoli-"

"Hey!"

The angry shout put a halt on the frustration that lingered in the air. Heads turned to look at the approaching pink filly, wings fluttering as she opened her legs wide and put on an apologetic look. "Sorry about that. I just wanted to get your attention."

"Uh...that's okay." Olive tilted her head. "Who are you, exactly?"

"I'm Cozy Glow! I just came from...uh..." The filly pointed to the hallway behind her. "I dunno, but it was some blue room with four tubes."

O'Malley's eyes widened. "The Tube Lobby!" he murmured. "H-how's Ms. O? She's not escaping, is she?"

"Ms. O?" Cozy sat on the name for a moment, then it hit her. "Oh! Her! Uh, no, she's...sleeping. Pretty sure she can escape through that hole, though."

"What hole?"

"There's this hole that goes through a bunch of rooms and stops at a hallway. That's how I got here." Cozy shrugged. "Weird design choice, if you ask me, but-"

A high-pitched sound that was caught in between the stages of wheezing and screaming resounded through the bullpen.

Oscar's brow furrowed. "...O'Malley?"

"I HAVE TO PATCH UP THAT HOLE!"

Before anyone could respond, the young Tube Operator was speeding past Cozy and heading down the hallway.

"What's wrong with him?" Cozy asked.

"Well-"

Oscar made a mad grab for Olive's lips, stretching them away from her face like undercooked pizza dough. "Don't forget, we're talking to a villain."

"Well that's not very nice!" Cozy stuck her bottom lip out. "I'm not a villain. I'm just a filly who doesn't know where she is, that's all."

Oscar, realizing that Cozy had no knowledge of why she was sent to Headquarters, simply rolled his eyes.

"Would any one of you please help me get home?"

Olive muttered something unintelligible, though it was easy to tell from her narrowed eyes that it involved at least one curse word, if not more.

Cozy opted to ignore this. "Pretty please? I just wanna go home!" Her eyes began welling up with tears. "I-I wanna see my mommy and daddy!"

"All right, fine! Jeez. Just stop whining." Oren stepped forward. "Come on. I'll take you back home. Let's go, before O'Malley does something stupid and wakes Ms. O up. As he always does."

As he passed by Olive, he only uttered the words "you're welcome", which didn't help her mood. What also didn't help was that he was too far away to literally wipe the stupid smirk off of his ugly face.

With the filly gone, Oscar let go of her lips, and she was able to speak. That is, once she reassembled them on her face.

"Oscar, I don't usually say this...but what the heck."

"You were gonna tell Cozy Glow about our entire plan! Are you crazy?"

"Are you projecting or are you asking a legitimate question?"

"She's a villain, Olive. You were partnered with Odd Todd. You should know how dangerous child villains are."

"And yet the executives keep throwing them at us."

"...What?"

"Forget it. You wouldn't understand."

Needless to say, Oscar knew what would be on his mind for the rest of the week.

"Anyway, let's get back to it." Olive turned to Olaf. "Olaf, you can pick either bike or trampoline for Ms. O's gift. No potatoes."

"Tram-potato-line?"

"No."

"Potato bike?"

"No."

"Tram-potato-line-bike?"

"Oh yeah, this is hell."

When Oren and Cozy got to the hole that the latter had described, O'Malley had only barely started patching it up. A few wooden boards were sitting next to him, with two attached on the top and bottom of the hole with school-grade glue.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"Hey!" O'Malley pointed a screwdriver at Oren. "You're lucky I have some Maintenance knowledge under my belt. So don't complain."

"I'm not-" Oren gave an irritated sigh. "Well, yes, that, but also, how many rooms does that hole go through?!"

O'Malley paused and looked. "I'd say about ten."

"And they all look tame...for the most part. Hopefully there are no pancakes." Oren glanced at Cozy. "Let's go."

Due to having the benefit of wings and the ability to fly with them, Cozy reached the Tube Lobby at a faster rate than Oren did. Oren wasn't exactly the most athletic agent of Precinct 13579, and it was lucky for him that most of the rooms he went through were either empty or required a specific trigger to activate. Except for one, which played the opening theme to some show called Neighborhood Wars he had never heard of.

Finally, when he got to the Tube Lobby, he looked at his surroundings. It looked a bit gruesome. He could swear he saw blood...there was a chrysalis on the ceiling...oh yes, and Ms. O was snoring away in her bed. He scoffed, because a boss falling asleep on the job was beneath him. If he were a Director, he certainly wouldn't take naps at work, that was for sure.

"Hey!" Cozy yelled, snapping him out of his reverie. "You're supposed to get me back home, remember?"

"Oh! Yeah, right, right." Oren made his way to the control desk, eyeing the buttons with unease. He had no idea how to operate the tubes, a haunting realization he had made in that moment. All he had to go off of was watching the hands of the tube operators that sent him up the tubes.

"Hurry up!"

"I'm trying, okay?! I don't know how to operate these things!" Oren snapped, before his eyes warily shifted to Ms. O. She moved ever slightly, but otherwise continued to snore as though nothing had happened.

With a sigh, Oren pressed the upper-left button, which raised the structure above it upwards. Said structure was a pillar with a sphere attached to its top, so in his eyes, he was on the right track.

It wasn't the buttons that swayed him, though, so much as it was the computer at the head of it all. That took luck and a lot of blind tapping. When the tube finally got activated, he sighed in relief.

"Golly, I'm gonna miss you. It was fun watching you struggle."

That was the straw that broke the camel's back for Oren, as he took Cozy, hurled her as hard as he could, and sent her up the tube without another word.

His eye twitched as he looked at his boss. Still asleep. That was all he needed to know. He started booking it back through the rooms, taking the time to punch a few walls in the process. O'Malley was slow in the building department, after all. There was a reason why he became a tube operator.

Author's Note

Yet another concept for the idea bin. I don't regret a single thing.

...Except Oprah punching the Swiss cheese bug. Let's be honest, bug would put up more of a fight than that. But this is a crackfic and you shouldn't go to Crane Brothers levels of analysis with mine.

Destroy Them With Pew-Pews (Or At Least Try To)

Oprah's nap wasn't all too long. Mainly because the sound of Tube 2 sending down someone else woke her up.

It made no sound, only existing as a void-like entity with piercing red eyes. The green sclerae indicated sickness, but the purple void indicated nothing but purely evil intent. It shifted over to the being in the bed, every part of its eye glowing.

"Ugh..." Oprah sat up, rubbing her head. "Knew I should've invested in some heavy-duty earplugs when I had the cha-"

Her eyes shot open in an instant. She stared at the...thing in front of her for what felt like an eternity. She'd stared in voids that had stared back at her, eyes and otherwise. This was something completely new, even for someone who was hundreds of years old.

The shadow began flickering faster as a face slowly formed from the ominous mist, until it looked like a horse ridden by the Devil himself was poking its head out. A solid-looking tongue poked out, snaking around the lips, hungry for something to ignite the taste buds that lived on it.

Oprah, unsure of how to start the conversation, cleared her throat. "Uh...hi?" she said. "This is a little awkward. But you woke me up, so of course I'm gonna complain."

"You...are not a crystal ponyyyy..."

"Okay, I'm gonna ask this once. Can you change into a solid form or something? Because you're not fooling me. I was dreaming about fighting oddness in the Odd Woods before you came along and ruined that utopia."

The shadow bared its teeth and rolled its eyes. Like a fan taken to a steaming pie, it writhed about until all that stood was a unicorn stallion clad in metallic armor and with a red ermine robe. "There. Perhaps that is more to your liking?"

"Very." Oprah flung the sheets off of her and got on her two feet, beginning to put her shoes back on. "Now, can you tell me your name?"

"Only if you tell me yours first."

"Oprah, Odd Squad, Precinct 13579, and frankly, I don't give a rat's ass anymore. In fact, I'm incapable of even giving a rat's ass."

"Mm. The name is King Sombra. A..." Sombra paused. "Well, somewhat pleasant to meet you."

Right then and there, Oprah's mind began formulating a plan. A way to get out of the torture chamber she had been confined to, while also allowing herself one more beating of one more equine oddity. She had beaten these villains easily -- but could she also join them?

"I'll make this brief, Your Majesty." she began. "As absurd as it sounds, I'm trapped in here and need to get out. If you help me, then I promise I will send you back to your hometown of Equestria."

"Wait. Exactly how did I get here?"

Oprah waved her hand dismissively. "It's a long story. And one that I'm not interested in telling, so don't even ask."

Sombra snorted. "Very well." He turned towards the doors farthest from him, his eyes glancing at the hole in the wall for only a brief second before he turned back to the door. "But I don't wish to go back to Equestria. If I can't enslave ponies, then perhaps it is time I set my sights on..." A wave of his hoof. "Whatever you are."

Of course, Oprah wasn't going to let him enslave the entirety of humanity, for reasons that spoke for themselves. But that didn't mean she was going to tell him that, even in spite of her annoyance. "A human. Now can you please get on with it?"

Standing tall and poised, Sombra marched to the doors and eyed them. His horn lit up in a dangerous blend of purple and green, crackling with black lightning that began snaking into the air. It surrounded a sphere of magic that was growing steadily in size.

Suddenly, Oprah was beginning to regret the last few minutes, because there were only so few ways to get away with murder and only so few spots underground to build a working Odd Squad Headquarters.

When the sphere was only just slightly larger than Sombra's head, he fired it in one massive beam. And as much as Oprah wanted to close her eyes, her brain was too shell-shocked to give that command.

All she could do was watch the disaster dominoes fall, helpless to do anything about them when it came to her juice boxes, her Headquarters, and her agents. (In that exact order.)

Skilled agents knew that the sound of rumbling meant one of two things. Either an earthquake was occurring, or dinosaurs were about to break out of the Dinosaur Room downstairs.

It didn't matter what the origin of it was. The point was that it caused sheer mass panic.

The guests quickly began booking it for any area away from the bullpen, screaming and yelling all the while.

"What's going on?!" Oscar cried through the din.

"I-I don't kno-"

The beam that shot through was only mere inches from Olive's head. It made a beeline for the back wall, melting the cords used to hold the circular metal structure up in the process before it tried its best to shred a hole in the metal poles.

Oscar turned to watch the feat, his glasses sliding down his nose as though gifted with incredible comedic timing. Never had he seen fire extend outwards from hitting a wall made out of metal. If he weren't so flabbergasted, he'd have laughed at the absurdity of something put together with school glue defending an extremely powerful magic blast.

After a minute, the beam called it quits and died down. The poles were charred black, but were otherwise intact.

And of course, that was the moment when the newly-discharged Otto chose to show up. "Hey, partner! Hey, Oscar. 'Sup?"

No one answered him. He took a moment to look around the area. "Where did everyone go?"

Oscar took a deep inhale. "Otto, look at the poles up there."

Otto did. "They're black. Did a fire break out?"

"No." Oscar marched over to him and grabbed his shoulders. "There was this beam of dark magic that just shot through here and tried to destroy Headquarters."

"There's a villain break-in? Today?! Aww man, that ruins all my cake-eating plans!"

Had it not been for his ever-deteriorating eyesight brought on by years of blue light exposure, Oscar would have flung his glasses off in frustration. Instead, he had to make his teeth deteriorate just a little bit more by grinding them. "No! I-" He shook his head furiously. "I don't know where it came from. It could be a villain, a creature, something...completely random..."

Otto blinked.

"The point is, Ms. O's party will be ruined if we don't do anything to stop the source of that beam!"

The sound of a throaty scream, one fueled by terror and upset, caused the two boys to locate its source. Which, despite it sounding completely inhuman, wasn't a hard thing to do, given how they were the only individuals who hadn't hoofed it.

"Olive?" Otto went over to her, poking and prodding her. "Are you okay? What happened?"

"She is coming."

"What?"

Saying nothing more, Olive's arm raised in a robotic manner, her index finger pointing at the hole the beam had made.

Otto looked.

"Oh my God."

A bright light filled both Tube Lobby and Trophy Room, with fog waving through for added dramatic effect. The faint silhouette of a small human could be seen, and next to it stood a four-legged creature that looked to be born from the darkness and molded by it, all to be a contrast to the heavenly backdrop.

Oscar, too, looked at where Olive was pointing. This time, he pushed his glasses back up. enough to watch the spectacle that was about to unfold.

The silhouette and creature turned and stood. Different gestures of body language were exchanged, none of which were deciphered.

And then the silhouette pulled out something from its back.

Otto, Olive and Oscar were all too flustered to comment on the creature being sucked into the thing that, to any agent with a sharp eye, could be identified as a gadget of some kind.

"Did..." Oscar blinked. "Did we just witness something out of Ghostbusters?"

Otto nodded. "Uh-huh. Only with less Bill Murray."

The silhouette put the gadget away, then began walking. Closer, mind, not further away, which was how the terrified trio could see exactly who it was.

"Holy shit, it's Ms. O!" Otto slapped himself in the forehead. "Oh, my pay's so gonna get docked for that word..."

Oscar pulled a gadget out from his own back and materialized into existence a bike, knowing that Polly would probably whine about it being unfair to democracy later.

Otto, meanwhile, was busy shaking his partner furiously. "Olive! Olive, snap out of it! Partner, please, Ms. O is coming and she...uh...oh..."

All three agents laid eyes on their boss. Or what they had to assume was their boss, anyway. The unkempt hair, torn clothes, and stains of dirt and blood and slime alike didn't help in confirming her actual identity, though it looked close enough to the real deal.

"Where's O'Malley?" were the first words out of the Director's mouth. "I need to thro- speak. I need to speak. To him. Now."

Oscar bit his lip. "He, uh...w-well, he kind of ran off when the...beam came shooting through here, heh. I'm not sure where he is."

"Find him."

"Finding him!"

The departure of the Scientist meant that only Olive and Otto were remaining. One was still in a state of shock. The other was more concerned that he would be going back to the Hospital Room for Round 2.

"So, uh..." Otto looked around nervously. "I guess O'Malley's...plan was a success?"

Within a second, his tie was grabbed and pulled, nearly choking him. He found himself nose-to-nose with his boss, who had a murderous glare in his eyes he had never seen in any child that wasn't Odd Todd before.

"You're going to tell me what you're hiding or I'll be sending you to McDonald's."

"We're going to McDonald's if I don't tell you what's going on?"

If it didn't kill him, Oprah would have yanked his tie further. "No." she snarled. "Tell me what you're doing here and why you decided to keep me trapped in the Tube Lobby."

"It's a surprise party for your birthday!"

Olive, slowly coming to, let her eyes shift to Otto with a cartoonish squeaking sound effect.

"We were planning one for you, but you came back earlier than expected, so we needed to stall you. Oscar was the one who suggested to O'Malley that he lock you in there, and suggested that he send you all those villains to fight when you began to open the doors. O'Malley made it automated so he could focus on the party..."

Oprah's expression softened considerably, but it didn't ease Otto's nervousness.

"We wanted to do something nice for your birthday! I-I had no idea it would turn out to be so crazy!" Otto heaved a sigh. "I'm...really sorry. I shouldn't-"

An epiphany hit him like a truck. His face remained frozen, only his eyes moving in their sockets as he contemplated his hands. Olive blinked, but didn't say anything.

Otto forcefully freed himself from Oprah and pointed at her with all the fury of a lawyer in a trial gaining the upper hand. "You."

"Huh?"

"You were the one who sent that mystery meat, didn't you? You were the one who poisoned me!"

Oprah stared in confusion.

"When we were trying to figure out what cake you wanted, this roast chicken appeared out of nowhere. I caught it in my hands and ate it, and I found out that it wasn't chicken at all!" Otto's nose wrinkled in disgust. "What was it?"

"All right, let me start by saying that poisoning you was not my intent, Agent Otto." Oprah said. "And if I did, then I apologize. But that meat was of a creature known as a draconequus."

Otto thought on this for a moment, then shook his head. "Nah, I don't know what that is."

"It's an odd creature with parts from all sorts of animals. Lizard feet, horse's hooves, bat wings, so on, so forth."

"Ohhhhh. Okay. I think I understand." Otto jabbed a finger into his boss's chest. "You fed me meat of an odd creature?"

"You didn't have to eat it."

"But I was hungry! And I figured it would be a fairer option than arguing over cake."

"Yes, what every birthday party needs: meat. You might as well add peas and rice to it, make it a real party. God forbid anyone have any sweet treats, right?"

"Ha ha." Otto couldn't resist an eye roll. "I had to get my stomach pumped, you know. I was in the Hospital Room for forever."

"But you didn't die."

"Of course not."

"Good. Just want I wanted to hear." Oprah tried to peer past Otto. "After I give O'Malley a good fitting punishment, let's all enjoy the party together."

"Aren't you worried about that beam?"

Oprah chuckled. "Oh, that? That was just King Sombra. I told him to blast a hole in the doors so I could be freed. Once that was done, I did what any sane person would do: turn on him, and suck him into a gadget." She took out the device from her hammerspace spine. "I'll send him back to Equestria when the party's over."

Otto wasn't sure what to ask about first. It was a two-way tie between who "King Sombra" was and how he was so easily defeated with an Odd Squad gadget. The offer of letting the party continue, though, outweighed all of his questions in terms of priority. "Eh, works for me."

"Olive?" Oprah's gaze landed on the girl. "You've been quiet. Are you okay?"

With a tender touch, Olive felt the top of her head. "T-T-That beam...th- that beam nearly hit me!" Her voice was nearly a murmur, but the quiver within it was unmistakable.

"You're not hurt, are you?"

"N-No...but I..." Olive slowly began stumbling towards the hallway, going past the slide and the sandbox and hugging the brick wall for dear life. "I need...t-to go lay down for a m-minute, e-excuse me..."

Out of the corner of her eye, Oprah saw Otto following her. "Otto, don't. She'll be fine."

"But she-"

"She'll be fine." Oprah said with a rigid tone. "Let her rest. She's just a little traumatized." She crossed her arms and shook her head. "Second time in the span of a year...poor girl."

Otto opened his mouth to ask exactly what his boss meant by it being the second time within a year, but closed it. It wasn't like she would tell a rookie agent like him anyway, and at this point he was pretty sure a headache was going to start forming.

"Ms. O!" Oscar called, rushing into the bullpen with a familiar agent in his arms. "I got O'Malley!"

"Hm? Ah, good." Oprah put on a devilish grin, reaching behind her back and taking out a gadget similar to your average ray gun in appearance. "Tell me something, O'Malley. Do you like juice?"

The fear in the tube operator's eyes was one accompanying a thousand-yard stare. He stammered in a pathetic attempt to get words out, before shaking his head.

"Aww, that's a real pity. You see, when you trapped me in the Tube Lobby, I only had two juice boxes. And due to the magic of Discord, one of the villains you sent down..." Oprah booped him on the nose. "...I couldn't take out any more. And do you know what happens when I don't get my one thousand juice boxes a day?"

A shaky grin formed on O'Malley's face. "Y-Y-You don't get...Type 2 diabetes?"

"Noooo. No, not in the slightest. I go into withdrawal." Oprah cocked the gun. "Now, there is a way you can stop me from going into withdrawal. But it requires getting more juice boxes for me."

Dread began hanging in the air, spreading not just to O'Malley, but to Otto and Oscar as well.

"Now don't worry. I know where you can find some."

The gadget began charging up. When it was at 90% power, Oprah's lungs went for the windup, and then they went for the grand pitch.

"ON THE MOOOOOOOOON!!"

And that was how O'Malley found himself on the moon, with the giraffes that were vacationing there for the summer and an alicorn who called herself "Princess Luna".

"BEEEEEYEEEEEEEEEEETCH!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!"

Author's Note

I had originally wanted to reference Sombra's complete lack of ears in both the title and the fic, because it's a fact I only learned about a month ago and I haven't been able to unsee it since. Now you get to watch Sombra in action with that fact rattling in your brain. You're welcome.

Destination's ahead on the right. You're almost home free.

Well, Look At It This Way: I Mean Technically, Her Party is Saved

After a quick check for any residual damage Sombra's beam might have caused, the focus began on gathering the scattered party guests. Given the sheer size of Headquarters and the base number of agents employed at Precinct 13579 specifically (estimates have it at around 200), this was usually a more difficult feat than anticipated, but Otto found them all huddling together in the Crying Room within minutes. He chalked it up to every guest being relatively new to Odd Squad by some sheer coincidence.

Oprah opted to make an official announcement declaring the place to be free of danger, sending the Maintenance department to fix up the Tube Lobby, the Trophy Room, and the rooms that Tirek had blasted through once she discovered that. (Finding out she could have freed herself without having to resort to a shadowy unicorn's magic was something she would be stewing over for the next month. But she didn't want to be branded a liar and make the bullpen a hazard zone by having some agent's head.)

As the party really began to get going, Oscar wheeled his present over to his boss. "Here, Ms. O." He smiled sheepishly. "This was a last-minute gift on my end, but hopefully you enjoy it, heh."

Oprah stared at the gift. Faking enthusiasm was something she had gotten skilled at over the years, and it came in handy with this gift that was so obviously a bike. And not even a store-bought bike -- it was generated with a gadget.

"Oh, a bike!" She examined it. "With a horn...oh wow, and a basket too!" A blush began to form in her cheeks, one that was completely involuntary. "I love it. Thank you so much."

This verbal seal of approval was met with massive applause from the party guests.

"Now let's cut some cake! All that fighting made me hungry."

Chopping oranges, apples, and other such spherical fruits in half with one simple hand chop was one thing. Chopping an entire cake was another.

"Ah ah ah-" Polly made a mad grab for Oprah's wrist. "Maybe we should just use a knife."

"Why? It's not fun that way."

"My Aunt Beryl tried to chop a cake with her hand once. Scrubbing the wall to get that off was no easy feat." Polly chuckled. "No need to make a big show out of it. Just cut it evenly with a knife."

Oprah scoffed. "I hope you're not taking that attitude to the Parliament building."

"Please. They make a big show out of everything in there. That's why politics are terrible nowadays." Polly puffed out her chest. "Just wait until I get in there."

"Uh-huh." Oprah reached behind her back and took out a large pointy knife. "Well, I got the knife, so-"

"Ah ah ah-" Polly made a mad grab for the knife. "Curvy blade. Not pointy. You need to be a role model."

"For who, my mom?" Oprah pulled the knife back, tucked it away, and came back with another knife that had a curvier blade. "There. Let me cut the cake already."

Polly simply gave a wink to the reader and allowed her friend to work her magic in splitting the cake into even pieces for everyone.

From there, the party went off without a hitch, though Olaf had to be dragged off after his howls communicated clear complaints about the lack of potato. Olive was in attendance as well, but it was clear she would be having nightmares about The Magic Beam That Caused a Close-Call Haircut for at least a month.

During a break in one of the party games, Musical Exercise Balls, Otto found himself faced with an innocently-toned question from his boss. One that nearly made him abandon the game he was winning and book the nearest toilet with the closest window of availability.

"Hey, agent...after you took a bite of that roasted draconequus, what exactly did you do with it?"

For the rest of the day, Otto began to feel the same kind of dread his partner had experienced.

Oprah, on the other hand, went to bed a happy immortal child. She had beaten up several things, had a spectacular birthday party, and saved her Headquarters from utter destruction. So aside from the birthday party, it was nothing more than a typical day at Odd Squad.

The more she thought about it, though, the more her curiosity grew about the world of Equestria. Sure, it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows, but there had to be some sunshine and rainbows, right? It couldn't be a world populated solely by villains. That would be absurd.

Oh well. Something to tackle another day. Right now, it was what Otto had once lovingly called "honk-shoo time".

Back in Equestria, in a rock-filled clearing, the surviving villains all surrounded a silver plate with a roast chicken on it.

"What...is it?" Cozy asked.

Chrysalis tried to respond, but her tongue was too mangled to form words properly.

"It appears to be meat of some kind." Tirek observed. He caught Starlight reaching out to it with her hoof and smacked it. "Don't touch it, you foolish pony! Who knows if it's poisonous?"

"By touching it? Don't kid yourself."

Tirek rolled his eyes. "If you wish to answer the question yourself, be my guest. But I say we should burn it."

"Who, me?"

Screams resounded through the area. With a bright flash, the roast chicken was gone, replaced with the whole form of Discord.

"Ahh, it feels so good to be me again. If I'm honest, being roasted is not how I want to go out." He chuckled. "Goodness, if I had stayed back in that wretched world with that ugly-looking human, I'd be as good as dead!"

Starlight blinked. "What?"

"Oh, yes, right, you weren't there, were you?" Discord shook his head. "No, no, see, when I faced off against that 'Oprah' character, she tackled me full-force, pinned me down, then used some kind of machine to turn me into roast draconequus. It took me by such surprise that I hardly had a chance to fight back." He stroked his beard idly. "I could remember hearing other voices, and someone taking a bite out of me."

Cozy's cheeks bulged, and she quickly raised a hoof to her mouth to keep from spewing, with Starlight doing the same. Chrysalis's lopsided eyes widened as far as they could. Tirek tried his damnedest not to laugh.

Discord thrust a talon at the latter. "Don't. You know fully well I could have turned back to normal. But my magic was weakened. As was yours, I presume?"

That got Tirek to drop his amused reaction. "Not so much weakened as it was that I could not find one being to pry it from. That world has no ponies. Only..." He bared his teeth. "...magicless humans."

"Oh, they're not so bad." Discord said. "Though Oprah did manage to break my spell rather easily. Too easily."

Cozy crossed her legs. "Take it from me, Discord: you underestimated her. All of you did." A smug smirk formed on her face. "She's a villain. A child villain. I'm a child villain. You see where I'm going with this?"

Silence. And then, a chorus of "ohhhhh" sounds.

"She knew she had the upper hoof. She went to sleep on me while I was telling the amazing story of how I nearly drained Equestria of all its magic! Went! To sleep!" Cozy landed and stamped her hoof on the ground, her expression turning into an ugly depiction of anger hardly ever seen before on a small Technicolor equine. "I ended up having to go to her stupid lackeys to get me back here!"

"Typical."

"What was that?!"

"You heard me." Starlight said. "I'd have suggested you kill her, but with your small hooves I doubt you could do much."

"Oh? And what about your horn?" Cozy flicked it, making it bounce up and down like a door stopper. "You couldn't even beat Twilight and her dumb little friends. How did you manage to beat Oprah?"

Starlight stammered, her eyes darting back and forth in an effort to avoid eye contact. No matter what, though, Cozy took up most of her field of vision, and so she quickly conceded. "I...didn't." she muttered. "But it's not for a lack of trying."

Cozy simply raised an eyebrow.

"I tried all sorts of spells on her. She dispelled every one of them. Until she..." Starlight craned her head downwards and pawed at the ground in shame, though not because of her obvious lie. "...punched me into the tube and sent me up."

The group erupted into mocking laughter. Even Chrysalis got in on it, despite her laugh sounding more like that of a deranged serial killer.

"It was sudden! I had no idea what was going on!"

The laughter grew louder in volume.

Starlight growled. "Forget it! I'm leaving. Time wasted here with you frauds is time better spent planning how to take down Twilight Sparkle and the others."

With her head raised upwards, she left the clearing in a bright aqua-blue flash of magic.

"Ahh, what a party pooper." Discord wiped the tears away from his eyes, his body heaving with a few more laughs. "She is right, though. As fun as it is talking with you all, I do believe there are some areas I must study to enact the perfect chaos. Or 'oddness', as it were."

Cozy pouted. "Aww, can't you stay a little longer?"

"I'm afraid not, my dear." Discord ruffled the filly's head. "Chaos waits for no one, not even myself. And the sooner, the better!"

A snap of his fingers, and the villain meeting attendance count was down to a measly three.

"So Tirek, are you gonna try and steal magic again?"

Tirek's eyes narrowed slightly as he thought over Cozy's question. "Hmm...perhaps. I am quite curious to know if Oprah meant anything by leading me to a source of magic..."

"I wouldn't take her words at face value. Context?"

"She offered it in a deal."

"Yeah, she's lying."

Unable to think of a suitable swear, Tirek gave a growl of frustration.

"I don't blame you. She's very convincing. Her and her minions." Cozy sighed and looked at the dark cloudy sky above her. "At least we can still conquer Equestria!"

"Hm. Indeed." Tirek smirked. "What say you and I team up?"

"Golly! You and me?" Cozy's eyes widened in mock surprise. "I'd love to, partner. Let's get started right now."

Chrysalis only barely caught the little filly's devilish smile. She knew that smile. It was the "I'm going to stab you in the back and regret absolutely nothing about it" smile. Her torn-up body thrashing about, she tried to tell Tirek that he was due for a nasty surprise.

Tirek noticed, and responded in kind by taking her magic, leaving her more powerless than she was before.

Would she die? Probably. There was a strong chance. Did Cozy and Tirek care? Not worth the successful conquering of Equestria, let alone the world. They had each other. That was all that mattered.

And as for Oprah...well, revenge on her would come in time. Once they figured out her weaknesses and all that stuff. But that was a long ways away. Equestria came first.

Sombra, however, never made it to the impromptu villain gathering. He died halfway into the journey, via his shadowy form being mixed up and turned around to degrees that, while possible in the realm of Equestria, were near-fatal to completely fatal in the world of Odd Squad.

The gadget he had been trapped in was later found in a bog by a few traveling ponies, but left to float in its endless stretch after said ponies decided the gadget was just another piece of trash from a litterbug.

If this all sounds unsatisfying to you, the reader, look at it this way.

Now Twilight and co. only have two villains to fight by the end of Season 9.

Author's Note

I had originally wanted to publish this for Crackfic Storm 2024, but at the time I found out about the event, I had four more chapters to go and I knew I wasn't going to get this done in time. So this serves as a belated April Fools Day fic. Hope you all had a good run this year, whether you took part in the legendary Explosion Event or not.